The fallout from an extramarital affair between Ensign and Cindy Hampton, a campaign staffer, is threatening to ensnare other Republican leaders as they try to marshal opposition to the Obama administration.

A June 11 letter written by Hampton's husband, published today in the Las Vegas Sun, claims that at least one of Ensign's colleagues, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., knew about the affair more than a year before Ensign's public confession, but did not act to remove him from party leadership...

Initially, it seemed as though the splatter would be confined to Ensign's political ambitions. After admitting to the affair on Tuesday, Ensign - a rising star among conservatives who was thought to be considering a presidential run in 2012 - resigned his post as the Senate's fourth-leading Republican.

Then it emerged that Cindy Hampton's salary - paid from Ensign's political payroll - had doubled during the time of their affair, which went on from December 2007 to August 2008. Also in that period, Hampton's son landed a $1,000-a-month internship with the National Republican Senatorial Committee - chaired by Ensign. After Hampton and her husband, Doug (also a top Ensign aide), were dismissed by Ensign, the senator allegedly helped Doug Hampton find a job with a Las Vegas airline that is among his major campaign contributors.

So, wankers ... feel free to lecture the rest of us on morals and family values and such. Seriously, take it away. Let me make myself comfortable first, because this should be good.

BY THE WAY, as soon as he's an amoral scumbag and sleazebucket, Republican governor Sanford is suddenly a Democrat:

But you knew that, right?Fox News Channel: Because the mentally deficient deserve their own news outlet, too.

I'd like to believe it's a conspiracy on the part of FoxNews (there's certainly enough evidence for that) but honestly, the inattention paid to detail these days is epidemic. People are literally sleep-walking through their jobs or attending to them perfunctorily in between Tweets.

See, at least for me (and for many others), it's not the fact that Sanford's getting some on the side--that's between him and his wife/mistress/family--it's that he was a hypocrite about it:

The standard Sanford has set for other politicians over the years has been fairly high. A member of the House of Representatives during the heyday of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, he was often a harsh critic of the president for his marital misconduct.

This is "very damaging stuff," Sanford declared at one point, when details of Clinton's conduct became known. "I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally (to resign)... I come from the business side," he said. "If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he'd be gone."

Explaining his decision to back impeachment articles against Clinton, he added, "I think what he did in this matter was reprehensible... I feel very comfortable with my vote."

I honestly don't think right wingers recognise hypocrisy (they usually can't spell it, it for one thing, despite how often they use it to vilify their detractors), or believe it's necessarily a weakness. The doyenne of neoconservativism, Gertrude Himmelfarb is fond of quoting Francois de La Rochefoucauld's "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue."

That makes it sound noble. However, re-interpreting hypocrisy as "provisional truth," it just demonstrates what fucking liars they all are. Something they seem to think is a problem only if they get caught.

So here's the question raised by Maddow: if The State hadn't been in possession of the e-mails (which they apparently received anonymously, which could have explained why they hadn't been published earlier), would we ever have found out that Sanford had gone to Argentina -- and the reason why?

Or, as seems probable, would Sanford and his office have continued their stream of lies concerning the his whereabouts and availability to act as governor

Of all the things the classic repubs. reputation lost over the last 8 years, small-government, pragmatic forign policy, maintaining low taxes, who would have thought Moral superiority would have been one?